In the recent years, there has been a growing interest in remotely controlling individual lighting devices, e.g., lighting ballasts and dimmers, or groups of lighting devices. For example, it may be desirable to transmit control signals to certain devices instructing the devices to turn on, turn off, or dim. These conventional systems often comprise a central controller in communication—either wired or wirelessly—with a plurality of lighting devices. The central controller can receive status information from the devices, e.g., is the light on or off, and can transmit a control signal to the devices to perform one or more actions, e.g., turn the light on or off. One popular protocol employed in conventional lighting control systems is the Digital Addressable Lighting Interface (“DALI”) that allows for bi-directional communication between a controller and the lighting devices it is controlling.
When an individual lighting device is being commissioned for use in a lighting control system, the technician installing the device must record certain information about the device, which may include, but is not limited to, the manufacturer, style, part number, manufacture date, wattage, source, correlated color temperature (“CCT”), lumen output, distribution type, and fixture color, dimming method, driver manufacturer, driver part number, customer purchase order number, and/or customer item number. Conventionally, this information must be manually entered into a system level database that can be accessed by the controller. The information entered into the database provides the controller with the information necessary to control the lighting device. Unfortunately, the manual recordation and entering of information about a specific lighting device leads to many errors necessarily associated with manual data collection and entry processes. These errors may lead to the inability of the controller to control certain lighting devices or to improper control signals being sent to certain devices.
Therefore, there is a desire for improved systems and methods for commissioning lighting devices. Various embodiments of the present invention address these desires.